Saturday, June 17, 2006

I woke up this morning bright and early to take my wife to work; a Saturday call in at her government job. Today I would be responsible for my son all day, as I usually am because he is my priority. The only challenge for me is I had planned to spend the day at a pretty big BJJ Tournament; the Bravado Open Tournament followed by the Ontario Invitationals. I made the decision, rather than visit the Zoo for the day like last weekend, to bring my son the tournament. My son is 17 months old, which pretty qualifies me for a job in the cat herding sector.

We, my son Aiden and I, showed up at the tournament around 1:00 in the afternoon. We were welcomed by the school gym full of the humid heat of competition and my Professor smiling and waving me over. As I sat with teammate Timmy, we instantly got to enjoy some of my teammates fight; Victor was very impressive in his second match victory. And Oscar had a great fight a few minutes later in another win for our team. There were many other great matches in all four rings.

That was pretty much it for the first half of the tournament; good fights and some unmentionable drama. The next part of the tourney was the Invitational where we would get to see some of the best Brazilian Jiu Jitsu fighters in our area put on a show.

The team all showed for this part because Jonathan Lee, was invited to fight another tough 125lbs fighter from Joslin's, Greg Chadd. But Jonathan was not the only one of our team to fight; Sam Osman was also fighting for the intermediate open weight title.

Let's start with Sam. He is by far one of my favourite fighters and not because of his size or skill. I have never met someone with his spirit. You see, Sam takes BJJ and competition very seriously, a seriousness that one does not often see in people. Some people find it intimidating, I find it utterly refreshing and to put it bluntly, kick ass. His fight was with a another fighter who cleaned out their division to make it to the open weight division final. Sam had a tough fight against his very mobile opponent and won on points, 5 to 0 I think. It was a fun fight to watch because I role with Sam often and picked up some ideas. Hear that Sam... ;)

Now for Jonathan. He was one of the main reasons I attended today. Jonathan was born August 30th, 1986 making him a full 10 years younger than me... I was born August 31, 1976 :). I know, a useless factoid. Anyway, he was invited to fight in this tournament against a pretty tough fighter from Joslin's as I mentioned before. I was expecting a long game of chess but it turned out to be a 2 move checkmate. Jonathan went for the Triangle and then transitioned to a foot lock. 26 seconds after beginning, the fight was over. He won convincingly.

So today I walked home with an exhausted toddler, some new Keiko Raca fight pants, and the joy of watching my team kick some ass. As I close out my long day I sip my cold beer and write this post I think, "Man, I love this BJJ stuff".